Living with animals

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
so placid and self – contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the
mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

–Walt Whitman

I read it to Nick.
“I like it,” he said.
“Do you think our cat is like the animals in the poem?”
“Our cat is a goofball,” he said.